Pirate Bay Lawyers Continue Successful Defense

But guy from ABBA doesn't like 'lazy and mean' content thieves

STOCKHOLM - The criminal trial for the owners of torrent listing site The Pirate Bay entered week two as defense attorneys faced off against entertainment copyright lawyers.

Prior to testimony, Stockholm district prosecutor Håkan Roswall again adjusted the language of his indictment. The Pirate Bay is now charged with providing "the ability to others to upload and store torrent files to the service."

The accusation was a change from "provide[s] the ability to others to upload torrent files to the service," while another sentence was completely removed, reports Swedish English-language news site The Local.

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Swedish attorney Magnus Mårtensson of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry testified that he tested file-sharing services and downloaded copyrighted material using Pirate Bay's search engine, calling himself "a normal user, not an expert."

Under cross-examination, the defense managed to blow holes in the attorney's testimony. Mårtensson admitted that he assumed the site's trackers were used during download, and that he downloaded one BitTorrent client from a different site.

The IFPI attorney wouldn't answer when asked if the file-sharing was performed by the client, nor could he say if the files could be downloaded by searching on Google. Mårtensson admitted The Pirate Bay had nothing to do with the downloading, which was done through a file-sharing program.

Also taking the stand was Anders Nilsson of Swedish anti-piracy agency Antipiratbyrån, who explained he downloaded Swedish and American films via The Pirate Bay.

Nilsson kept logs tracing data traffic and testified nearly all files downloaded used a Pirate Bay tracker. The defense fired back at the assumption that all material listed on the site is copyrighted, and Nilsson admitted his agency was only working from a Pirate Bay "Top 100" list and did not check other areas of the site for non-copyrighted files.

Defense lawyers went on to argue that the prosecution had still not proven The Pirate Bay's tracker had been used for downloading, offering BitTorrent technical data as evidence.

IFPI's John Kennedy and Piratbyrån's Tobias Andersson are scheduled to testify Wednesday, reports TorrentFreak, which is providing daily coverage of the trial.

In related news, TechDirt reports Norway's Education Minister wants to legalize file sharing, while IFPI is pressuring the Norwegian government to block The Pirate Bay.

"All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die. But TV did not kill radio, the web did not kill the book and the download is not going to kill music," said Minister of Education Bard Vegar Solhjell.

Last week, Pirate Bay supporters hacked the IFPI website. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde asked that such attacks stop immediately, as it will not help their case.